THE SPRING OF JOUVENCE
Strange spectacle! Below them in a deep arena from which the water had
retired, over all the ground in the circle of cliffs were the ruins of
monuments and temples, still standing, but with truncated columns,
dislocated steps, scattered arches, roofless, without pediments or
cornices, a forest decapitated by lightning, but a forest the dead
trees of which held still all the nobility and all the beauty of ardent
life. Through the whole of it ran the Roman road, a triumphal road,
bordered with broken statues, framed by symmetrical temples, it passed
between the pillars of demolished arches and came up the bank to the
grotto in which they offered their sacrifices.
All of it was still dripping, shining, covered in places by a cloak of
ooze; and fragments of marble or gold sparkled in the sun. On the right
and on the left wound two long silver ribands. They were the waterfalls
which had once more found the bed of their stone canals and poured
their waters along them.
“The forum,” said Ralph, who was a trifle pale and whose voice betrayed
the emotion with which the sight filled him. “The forum—almost of the
same dimensions and the same shape. The papers of the old Marquess
contain a plan and explanations of it which I studied last night. The
town of Juvains was under the big lake, under this one were the hot
baths and the temples consecrated to the Gods of Health and Strength,
all ranged round the temple of Youth, of which you see the circular
colonnade.”
With an arm round Aurelie’s waist, to help her over the slippery
ground, he led her down the sacred way. The great slabs were slippery
under their feet. Moss and water plants and small pebbles covered their
surface. Here and there among the pebbles were pieces of money. Ralph
picked up two of them: they were stamped with the effigy of
Constantine.
They stopped before a small temple dedicated to Youth. What remained of
it was delightful; and there was enough to enable the imagination to
reconstruct an admirably proportioned rotunda, raised upon several
steps. Under it was the basin of a fountain, held up by four plump and
sturdy children, from the middle of which must have risen the statue of
Youth. Only two of them were still to be seen, charming, gracious,
dipping their feet in the basin, from which in days gone by four of
them hurled jets of water into the air.
Large pipes of lead, doubtless hidden when the city flourished,
appeared to come from a spot in the cliff, where was the spring which
supplied the fountain. To the end of one of them a tap had been
recently soldered. Ralph turned it. A jet of water darted out of it, a
trifle muddy.
“L’Eau de Jouvence,” said Ralph. “This is the water that was in the
bottle they took from the death-bed of your grandfather. The analysis
of it was written on the label of that bottle.”
For two hours they strolled about this fabulous city. Aurelie felt
again the sensations she had felt on her first visit, latent in the
depths of her being, and suddenly revived. She had seen that group of
funeral urns, and this mutilated Goddess and that street with broken
pavement and this arcade that made her tremble with melancholy joy.
She said softly: “My beloved, it is to you that I owe all this
happiness. But for you I should feel nothing but misery. While I am
with you everything is beautiful and delightful. I love you.”
At ten o’clock the bells of Clermont-Ferrand were chiming for High
Mass. Aurelie and Ralph came to the mouth of the passage. The two
cascades poured into it, running on the right and left of the triumphal
way, and vanished down four open sluices.
The amazing visit came to an end. As Ralph said once more, that which
had been hidden during the ages must not yet appear in the light of
day. No one must see it before the hour at which Aurelie should have
been acknowledged its mistress.
Therefore he closed the sluices which let the water run out and slowly
turned the winch of the flood-gates and little by little opened them.
Forthwith the water began to accumulate in the confined area; the big
lake pouring in in a broad sheet of water, the two cascades rearing
above their stone beds.
Then they ascended the cliff by the path down which Ralph had come the
night before with the two crooks, and stopping half way, they saw the
water rising quickly in the little lake, flowing round the bases of the
temple and rising quickly towards the magic spring.
“Yes: magic,” said Ralph. “That was the word the old Marquess used. In
addition to the constituents of the springs at Royat it contains,
according to him, principles of energy and strength, principles
springing from an astonishing radio-activity of an almost incredible
power. Rich Romans of the third and fourth centuries came to rejuvenate
themselves at this spring; and it was thee last proconsul of the
province of Gaul who, after the death of Theodosius and the fall of the
Empire, decided to hide it from the eyes of the invading barbarians and
protect against their enterprises the marvels of Juvains. Among many
others a secret inscription bears witness to it:
“By the will of Fabius Aralla, Proconsul, in order to protect them from
the Scythians and the Borussi, the waters of the lake have covered the
Gods whom I loved and the temples in which I worshiped them.”
“Fifteen centuries since that day! Fifteen centuries during which these
masterpieces in stone and marble have been worn away. Fifteen centuries
which might have been followed by a hundred more in which the
destruction of these memorials of a glorious past would have been
completed. If your grandfather, exploring the abandoned estate of his
friend Talencay, had not by chance discovered the machinery of the
flood-gates. Forthwith the two friends searched and groped and studied
and cudgelled their brains. They repaired the machinery. They set
machinery of the old massive wooden gates, which in days gone by kept
the little lake at the level which submerged the tops of the buildings,
working again. They repaired the machinery which worked the sluices.
“That’s the whole story, Aurelie, and this is the city you visited when
you were six years old. Your grandfather died; the Marquess never left
his estate at Juvains again; he consecrated himself body and soul to
the recovery of the invisible city. With the help of two of his
shepherds he excavated, dug, cleaned, consolidated, and restored the
work of the past; and that is the gift he offers you, a wonderful gift,
which not only brings you incalculable wealth from the exploitation of
a spring more precious than all those of Royat and Vichy, but also
gives you a collection of works of art and monuments such as exists
nowhere else.”
Ralph’s enthusiasm knew no bounds. It was sustained for more than an
hour during which he expressed all the exaltation with which this
affair of the drowned city filled him. Hand in hand they watched the
rising water and the sinking columns and statues.
Aurelie, however, kept silent. At last, astonished to feel that they
were no longer enjoying a complete communion of thought, he asked her
the reason of it.
She did not answer at once; but presently she said:
“You don’t know yet what has become of the Marquess of Talencay, do
you?”
“No,” said Ralph, not wishing to spoil the girl’s happiness. “I expect
that he remained at home, in the village, out of sorts perhaps—always
supposing that he has not forgotten the appointment.”
It was a poor excuse; and Aurelie did not appear satisfied by it. He
guessed that, after all the emotion she had felt and all the anguish
from which he had freed her, she was thinking of the things which still
remained obscure and that she was still troubled by not understanding
them.
“Let’s be going,” she said.
They climbed up to the ruined hut where the two crooks had encamped the
night before. Ralph proposed to go from it to the high wall through
which the shepherds had driven their flocks.
As they came round a rock near it she drew Ralph’s attention to a
good-sized bundle. A canvas sack resting on the edge of the cliff.
“It looks as if it moved,” she said.
Ralph glanced at it, told her to stay where she was, and ran to it. An
idea had suddenly struck him.
On reaching the edge of the cliff he seized the sack and thrust his
hand into it. Out of it he drew the head and then the body of a child.
At once he recognized Jodot’s little confederate, the boy whom the
crook carried with him like a ferret and set hunting in cellars and
through gratings and palings.
The child was half asleep. Ralph, furious, suddenly solved the problem
which had so puzzled him.
He shook the child and said: “You little blighter! You followed us from
the Rue de Courcelles! What? Jodot managed to hide you on the luggage
rack of my car. And you traveled like that to Clermont-Ferrand, and
sent him a post-card from there! Confess it! Or I’ll spank you!”
The child did not quite understand what was happening to him; and his
vicious, street-urchin’s, pale face filled with fear.
He muttered: “Yes. Tonton made me.”
“Tonton?”
“Yes: Uncle Jodot.”
“And where’s your uncle now?”
“We went away last night, all three of us, and then came back.”
“And then?”
“Then they went down below, when the water had gone, and hunted
everywhere and gathered things.”
“Before me?” cried Ralph.
“Yes: before you and the young lady. When you came out of the grotto
they hid themselves behind a wall down there, further off than the
grotto. I saw everything from here, where Tonton told me to wait for
him.”
“And now where are they both?”
“I don’t know. It was hot, and I went to sleep. I awoke for a little
while, and they were fighting.”
“Fighting?” said the astonished Ralph.
“Yes, for something they’d found, something that shone like gold. I saw
that they fell—Tonton gave William a jab with his knife—and then I
don’t know what happened exactly—I went to sleep again perhaps. But it
looked to me as if the wall fell and buried both of them.”
“What—what? What are you t-t-telling me?” stammered the horrified
Ralph. “Answer—where did this happen? At what time?”
“When the bells began to ring—quite at the end. Look—there.”
The child bent over the cliff and looked astounded. “Oh!” he said. “The
water’s come back!”
He thought for a moment then began to cry, and wailed: “Then—then—if
the water has come back—they weren’t able to get away. So Tonton——”
Ralph cut him short, saying: “Be quiet!”
Aurelie stood before them with troubled face; she had heard it.
Jodot and William, wounded, insensible, unable to stir or to call out,
had been covered by the flood and smothered and drowned. The stones of
the fallen wall lay upon their bodies.
“It’s terrible,” she stammered. “What a punishment for those two men!”
The sobs of the child grew louder. Ralph gave him some money and a
visiting card.
“Here: here’s a hundred francs. Go and take the train to Paris and go
to this address. You’ll be taken care of.”
The return journey was made in silence and at the entrance of the
sanatorium Aurelie’s good-by was very grave.
“Let us separate for some days,” she said. “I will write to you.”
Ralph protested. “Separate? Those who love one another do not
separate!”
“Those who love one another have nothing to fear from separation. Life
always brings them together again,” she replied.
He yielded, sadly, for he felt that she was leaving him.
A week later, in truth, he received this short letter:
My friend,
I am overwhelmed. I have learnt by chance of the death of my
step-father Bregeac! Suicide, was it not? I know also that they
found the Marquess de Talencay at the bottom of a ravine, into
which he had fallen they say, by accident. A crime, was it not?
Murder? And then the terrible death of Jodot and William. And then
so many deaths! Miss Bakersfield, and the two brothers, and, long
ago, my grandfather.
I am going away, Ralph. Do not try to learn where I am going. I do
not know yet, myself. I must think things over, consider my life,
come to a decision.
I love you, my friend. Wait and forgive me.
Ralph did not wait. The distress of mind shown by this letter, the
suffering she was enduring, his own suffering and anxiety, everything
drove him to action and urged him to seek for her.
His enquiries proved vain. He thought that she had taken refuge at
Sainte-Marie; he did not find her there. He made inquiries in every
quarter. He organized his friends to help him find her. His efforts
were useless. In despair, fearing that some new enemy was tormenting
her, he passed two really painful months. Then one day he received a
telegram. She begged him to come to Brussels next day, and fixed a
meeting-place in Cambre wood.
Ralph’s joy was boundless when he saw her arrive, smiling, at peace,
wearing an air of infinite tenderness, her face clear of all painful
memories.
She held out her hand and said: “You forgive me, Ralph?”
They walked along, side by side, for a little way, as near to one
another as if they had never parted.
Then she said: “You told me, Ralph, that I had two opposing destinies
which struggle with one another and hurt me. One is a destiny of good
fortune and gayety which is in accord with my true nature. The other is
a destiny of violence, death, mourning, and catastrophe, a whole array
of hostile forces which have persecuted me since I was a child and
strove to drag me into a gulf into which I should have fallen ten
times, if, ten times, you had not saved me. So after the two days at
Juvains, and in spite of our love, Ralph, I was so cowardly that I had
a horror of life. All that affair, which you considered marvelous and
fairy-like, for me took on an aspect of darkness and hell. And isn’t
this right, Ralph? Think of all I have endured! And think of all I have
seen! ‘There is your kingdom’, you said. I don’t want it, Ralph.
Between the past and me I only want one bond. If I have hidden myself
away for some weeks it is because I had a confused feeling that I must
escape from the grip of an affair of which I am the only survivor.
After years, after centuries, it came to an end in me; and it is I who
have the task of restoring to the light of day that which is hidden and
benefiting by all its rarity and magnificence. I refuse. If I am the
heir of its wealth and its splendors, I am also the heir of crimes and
punishments of which I could not bear the weight.”
“So that the will of the Marquess?” said Ralph, drawing the document
from his pocket and handing it to her.
She seized the will and tore it into fragments, which fluttered away in
the wind.
“I tell you again, Ralph. It is at an end. I shall not take the affair
up again. I am too frightened lest it should bring about, once more,
other crimes and other punishments. I am not a heroine.”
“What are you, then?”
“A woman who loves, Ralph—a woman who loves and who has remade her
life—remade it for love and nothing but love.”
“Lady with the green eyes,” he said. “It’s a very serious thing to take
a pledge like that!”
“Serious for me, but not for you. Be sure that if I offer you my life,
I want no more of yours than you can give me. You will maintain around
you this mystery which pleases you. You will never have to defend it
against me. I take you just as you are; and you are the noblest and
most fascinating thing I have ever met. I only ask one thing of you—to
love me as long as you can.”
“For ever, Aurelie.”
“No, Ralph: you are not the man to love for ever, nor even, alas! for
very long. But however short a time it lasts, I shall have known such
happiness that I shall have no right to complain. And I shall not
complain. Till this evening. Come to the Theater Royal, you will find a
box waiting for you there.”
They parted.
That evening Ralph went to the Theater Royal. They were playing “La Vie
de Bohême” with a young singer newly engaged in the part of Mimi, Lucie
Gautier.
Lucie Gautier was Aurelie.
Ralph understood. The independent life of an artist allows one to
disregard certain conventions. Aurelie was free.
When the play came to an end—amid what ovation! He made his way to the
dressing-room of the triumphant girl. The pretty fair head bent towards
him. Their lips met.
So ended the strange and dreadful affair of Juvains, which, for fifteen
years, was the cause of so many crimes and such anguish. Ralph
endeavored to snatch the small confederate of Jodot from his evil ways.
He handed him over to the care of the widow Ancivel. But William’s
mother, whom he had informed of the manner of her son’s death, took to
drink. The child, corrupted too early, could not rise from the depths.
They were obliged to shut him up in a reformatory. He escaped from it,
found the widow, and both of them went to the United States.
As for Marescal, having learned his lesson, but still obsessed with his
lady-killing ideas, he rose in rank. One day he asked for an interview
with M. Lenormand, the famous head of the detective police. At the end
of the interview M. Lenormand came a little nearer to his inferior, and
said to him, with a cigarette in his mouth: “Could you oblige me with a
light?” and that in a tone which made Marescal tremble. He had
instantly recognized Lupin.
He recognized him again under other disguises, always mocking and with
a winking eye. And every time he received point blank that terrible,
bitter, biting, unexpected little sentence and so funny by reason of
the effect it produced on him.
“Could you oblige me with a light?”
Ralph bought the estate of Juvains. But out of deference to the girl
with the green eyes, he would not divulge the marvelous secret. The
lake of Juvains and the Fountain of Jouvence may be reckoned among the
number of the accumulated marvels and fabulous treasures that France
will inherit from Arsène Lupin.